Celanese Corp. of Dallas has announced the award of a long-term supply contract to buy carbon monoxide from a Chinese company. Celanese needs the stuff for a 600,000 metric ton acetic acid plant that it is building in Nanjing. The contract, says the company, "gives Celanese a CO supply source that is based on readily-available coal processed by state-of-the-art environment-friendly technologies."

The odd thing is that if they’d built the plant in Los Angeles they could have had all the carbon monoxide they need for free.